Social networking can be a huge boon to your overall profits. It opens you up to strategic partnerships and places you in the midst of your customers to build profitable relationships. However, social networking can go awry and result in a net loss rather than the huge profits it promises. Here are 10 time saving, money making networking marketing tips to build your public domain business.

1. Budget/schedule your time. It’s very easy to spend hours upon hours chatting online with customers and industry associates. How much is your time worth? Whether your time is worth $20/hour or $200/hour presumably you cannot afford to spend your day on social networking. Determine how much time you can afford to spend, schedule it and stick to your schedule.

2. Outsource. One way to maximize your time is to outsource your networking efforts. Hire someone to track specific sites and notify you when relevant threads pop up so you can respond to only those threads. This saves you valuable time sorting through all of the other irrelevant chit chat. You can also hire someone to actually post for you – a ghost poster/writer.

3. Create a profile one site at a time. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by social networking websites. When first getting started, choose one site and make a real effort to become involved. Create a profile which helps brand your public domain business and commit to contributing on a regular basis. Once you’ve established yourself on one site, then you can add another.

4. Test and track your results. Like any marketing tool it’s important to test and track your results to make sure your efforts are paying off.

5. Create a unique URL for social marketing offers. To test and track most effectively, it helps to create a unique URL for each networking site. That way you can test and track specific promotions and how much a specific networking site actually contributes to your overall profits.

6. Don’t forget your signature. The purpose of social networking is to build relationships and to of course drive traffic to your website. If your signature doesn’t allow for your URL how are you going to drive traffic to your public domain site? Participate in networking sites only if they enable you to actually drive traffic to your URL.

7. Define your goals. Before you begin networking online, what do you want to get from your efforts? Establish goals. For example, I want to form a joint venture partnership or I want to increase traffic by 10%. Once you have concrete goals then you can create an action plan to achieve those goals. Without goals networking is merely a social exercise.

8. Integrate it into your marketing strategy. Make social networking part of your marketing strategy. Include it in your plan and create special promotions and offers just for your social networking friends.

9. Cross promote your social marketing efforts. Don’t network in a vacuum. Cross promote your social marketing efforts. For example if you have a newsletter include a “Visit me on Friendster” link. Likewise, let your social networking friends know about your newsletter.

10. Choose your networking sites wisely. Network with customers on one site/industry associates on another. Some sites will result in more traffic and profits than others. Depending on your industry, goals, and target audience some sites will definitely make more sense than others. Make sure the website fits your criteria and that it allows you to post a signature complete with your URL.

In order for social networking efforts to be successful they need to be approached strategically. Integrate your efforts into your marketing strategy and make a plan. Test and track your efforts and hone in on the sites which provide the best results.

Audio and video marketing are great ways to reach your public domain product audience on a more personal and approachable level.

They’re easily consumed by the general public.

People can watch or listen on their computer, telephone, and MP3 player.

They’re also easily forwarded which makes them an excellent viral marketing medium and with more and more companies getting their audience involved in content creation, remember the Doritos Super Bowl campaign?, combining audio and video marketing with Web 2.0 packs a punch.

Free or (almost free) Audio and Video Tools

The growing trend in audio and video marketing has resulted in some truly wonderful recording tools. Best of all, they’re free, or incredibly inexpensive, which is always great even if you don’t have a tight budget.

• Audacity, http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for most operating systems and is extremely easy to use. Whether you’re recording a podcast, a conference call, an interview or editing an audio recording, Audacity makes creating audio content quick, easy, and painless.
• Camtasia, http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp, is a screen recording software which can make even a beginner look like an experienced professional. If you’re not familiar with screen recording it simply means the software records whatever is on your computer screen.

  This is great for demonstrations, tutorials, how to articles, and even to simply show you’re your customers what you’re offering. However you can also install a webcam and record yourself with Camtasia making it an all around recording software.

  While it isn’t free, the software price is $299, they do offer a free trial. Take advantage of this free trial to make sure the software is right for you.

  I love this software. I resisted purchasing it for a very… I mean very long time. Now I don’t know what I would do without it.

• Snag-It, http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp. Made by the folks who make Camtasia, Snag-It enables you to capture any image on your computer and use it in your presentations, content, web pages and so on. Like Camtasia it isn’t free however it is extremely cost effective at a price of $49.95. Snag-It also offers a free trial.

  This is another little piece of software that I can’t live without. If you are looking for ways to “step it up a notch” with marketing your public domain products… this is one tool you really should have.

• YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/, is a tool which I’m sure you’re heard of. It makes creating the code and posting a video on your website quick and easy and best of all…it’s free!
• CamStudio, http://camstudio.org/, is open source screen recording software which records all screen and audio including webcam images and enables you to save them as AVI files. Sometimes opensource is a risk because developers lose interest and the product is full of bugs which never get fixed however CamStudio is the crème of the opensource crop with dedicated developers and a constant stream of improvements.

  I have not used this software. I’ve seen it recommended by many other marketers as the free alternative to Camtasia. But… I know it doesn’t have nearly the bells and whistles that Camtasia offers. Plus… I’ve heard that it can be buggy.   Just so you know.

Making audio and video marketing materials shouldn’t have to include forking over thousands of dollars when you can create clean, professional audio and video for your public domain business right from your own computer for next to nothing.

The internet is all a-twitter about Twitter. Okay, sorry about that, I’m sure it’s overused, however it’s also true.

Twitter is more than simple social networking.

Companies are using it quite successfully to communicate with their customers on an entirely new level. If you aren’t familiar with Twitter it’s a social media tool that gives people the ability to post messages online via instant message by asking the simple question - “What are you doing?”

So now you’re probably scratching your head and thinking, “How do I answer that question and promote my public domain products?”

Brand New and Hot off The Presses!!! Rick Butts teaches the Twitter Squeeze!!! > Click Here To Learn the  Twitter Squeeze

Here are some options to use Twitter to market public domain products:

Promote a blog

Does your business website have a blog? If you do, you can use Twitter to drive traffic to it. Post on Twitter and include a link to your blog. For example – “What are you doing?”

• “I just posted a free report on my website about….” Include a link to your blog and then track how many people visit.
• “I just found some amazing travel photos which I’m making into _______ come take a look.” Include a link to your site and track the traffic.

I mention tracking the traffic because you need to know if your Twitter efforts are paying off and what Twitter posts drive more traffic than others.

Make Announcements

Running a contest is a great way to get people involved. You could host a trivia contest using a quote from a public domain works and give away a product or coupon to the winner.

So when they ask “What are you doing?” You could say, “Trying to figure out who said _________. Know who said it? Visit…”

Get personal

Share personal adventures which relate to your life as it relates to your business.

Kind of a unique situation however if you’re working on a project say for example you’re pulling together images from a public domain children’s book to make an interesting picture book then perhaps you’re learning a new graphic design software.

What are you doing? “Struggling to learn Adobe Illustrator – Any tips?”

Follow

When you sign up for an account and build a profile page you’re able to follow other Twitter users. Often when you follow someone, they return the favor. This way you build a following and subsequently a list of potential customers for your public domain product.

There are a wide variety of ways to make Twitter more than just a fun social tool, use it to build your public domain products business today.

Did you know that if you sign up for the Public Domain Magazine you also get a ton of Public Domain Product Ideas in your email inbox??? Yep… just click on that magazine to the right of this article and you can quickly get access to some great Public Domain How To ideas. Got get it right now —>